


Blue Heart

by arabmorgan



Category: ATEEZ (Band)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Character Study, Choi Jongho-centric, M/M, One-Sided Attraction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-29
Updated: 2020-09-29
Packaged: 2021-03-07 19:54:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,959
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26713303
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arabmorgan/pseuds/arabmorgan
Summary: Jongho had never imagined himself as a character in a classic romantic tragedy, but then he had never imagined liking someone who was so clearly in love with someone else either.
Relationships: Choi Jongho/Jung Wooyoung (one-sided), Jung Wooyoung/Kang Yeosang
Comments: 12
Kudos: 67





	Blue Heart

Sometimes Jongho wished that he had found out earlier.

It wasn’t like Yeosang and Wooyoung had set up a group meeting without him and explicitly told the rest of the team about their relationship, but still. He’d only found out after debut, and by that time they’d been together for months. San had known, and Hongjoong, although Jongho wasn’t too sure about the rest.

It would have been humiliating if that was the sort of thing Jongho cared about.

He didn’t really. Jongho wasn’t the kind of person who feared being left out of secrets and such. He operated under the sensible assumption that if it was crucial for him to know, he would eventually be told. If they didn’t tell him, well, they probably had their reasons.

It really only mattered this time because it was Yeosang and Wooyoung specifically.

Jongho just couldn’t help feeling that if he had found out earlier, he wouldn’t have gone and developed the most stupidly massive crush possible on Jung Wooyoung.

* * *

He had thought it was hero worship at first.

Just like the way he had been taken aback the first time he had seen Yeosang, with his perfectly harmonious features and small, reserved smile, so too had Jongho been shocked by Wooyoung’s loud, easy gregariousness. There was no effort to his pouts or his cutesy acts – those all came naturally to him in a way that Jongho simply couldn’t fathom.

_Oh, so people like this exist_ , was what Jongho thought every time he watched Wooyoung from afar, or as he ducked away from the older boy’s affectionate touches with uncomfortable amazement.

San was sweet too, with a penchant for skinship, but it wasn’t the same. San was kind and gentle in a way that automatically prompted the exact same treatment back. There was a brittleness to him, a layer of insecurities hidden behind his dimpled smile that invited babying.

Wooyoung’s brand of affection was a little more self-centred. If he wanted it, he would do it, and that was that. He was larger than life in Jongho’s eyes, with the kind of fearless confidence that could surely only be a façade, and yet Jongho had never seen a single crack in it.

Even back then, it was Yeosang who had been Wooyoung’s strength. Jongho simply hadn’t realised it yet.

All he knew was that even when they were in the same room, all eight of them, it was Wooyoung who seemed to fill it with his laugh and his large gestures and his wide smile. He seemed to take up so much space that it left Jongho breathless, so much so that whenever Wooyoung turned that bright-eyed grin on him, it was all he could do to force a flustered laugh out in return.

It wasn’t that Jongho wanted to be _like_ Wooyoung. He was fortunately blessed to be one of the rare few individuals who was perfectly content with himself. He genuinely believed that his face was fine, his dancing was fine, and his personality was fine. He had absolutely no interest in training himself to be more accepting of skinship.

There was just something _more_ about Wooyoung that he couldn’t describe, a carelessness of word and deed that both appalled and impressed Jongho, who was always careful before he was bold. The two of them were miles apart in every way, and Jongho couldn’t help paying a little more attention to Wooyoung than the other members because of that.

That was what hero worship was all about, wasn’t it?

* * *

Eventually, Jongho realised that having one of his bandmates constantly occupy his thoughts even when they weren’t together seemed to constitute a little more than just plain admiration.

It wasn’t even anything major. Sometimes, as he sat in the studio working on his vocal runs, he would wonder idly about what Wooyoung was doing right then. Sometimes he thought of Wooyoung when he was eating something particularly delicious. Sometimes he got the urge to walk over to Wooyoung’s room just to chat, although it was an urge he rarely acted on.

The day he almost texted Wooyoung to ask if he was free for dinner even though Wooyoung wasn’t even at the company building, as opposed to Yunho and Mingi, who _were_ , was the day Jongho finally came to terms with his burgeoning attraction to their self-professed sexiest member.

_Oh_ , he thought with vague surprise as he stared down at the half-typed message in his private chat with Wooyoung. _I like him._ And that was that.

Jongho was, after all, a realist. There was a bit of the dreamer in him, he supposed – anyone who tried their hand at becoming an idol had to be at least partially a dreamer – but he wasn’t Hongjoong, who had given up everything for his dream. He wasn’t Wooyoung, who had given up everything for Yeosang.

Jongho wasn’t good at giving up on his safety nets. Even as he trained for his debut, he was still careful to do his best in school, working his way slowly but surely towards his graduation.

It wasn’t a killjoy to be a realist. He was just being careful.

In a similar vein, never in his wildest dreams did he ever expect anything reciprocal from Wooyoung. That would have been terribly unrealistic.

He had no doubt that Wooyoung loved him, in the same way that he loved teasing Seonghwa and loved messing around with Mingi, but Jongho would never be Wooyoung’s first choice. He wasn’t San or Yeosang, with whom Wooyoung shared anything and everything. He wasn’t Hongjoong, their reliable leader whom they had all gone to with their troubles at one point or another.

He was just that occasionally cheeky, mostly quiet younger brother who never demanded too much attention from any of them.

To the other members, Jongho with a crush probably didn’t fundamentally differ all that much from Jongho without a crush. Inside, however, he suddenly felt all sorts of topsy-turvy. The little moments Wooyoung hovered around him before darting away like an elusive hummingbird gained an absurd amount of prominence in his day. Even the simple way Wooyoung would come up behind him and rest his chin against Jongho’s shoulder when he was feeling lethargic made something flip violently in his stomach.

Yeosang was a comforting presence to Jongho in those confusing times, and he would find it amusingly ironic in the future, that he had sought so much solace in the one person who, even then, held the heart of the boy he liked in his loosely-clenched fist. There was a stoic patience to Yeosang that none of the other members came close to achieving. He was the kind of person Jongho could lean against, even fall asleep against, without Yeosang ever moving a muscle until Jongho shifted away of his own accord.

His tongue was full of barbs, but only to protect a heart that was softer than he knew what to do with, and Jongho adored Yeosang just as much before and after discovering that it was he whom Wooyoung loved.

* * *

Even after Jongho found out about Yeosang and Wooyoung, the depth of their relationship wasn’t immediately obvious to him. It made him feel just a little bit better to know that it had, at least, not been glaring him in the face the entire time.

There was an unmistakable bond between Wooyoung and Yeosang, but Jongho had always attributed their closeness to their years-long friendship. Yeosang was simply so undemonstrative in general that Jongho found it difficult to imagine him doing anything remotely romantic at all. Wooyoung, on the other hand, was consistently affectionate with everyone, to the point that his actions towards Yeosang didn’t stand out.

Or perhaps Jongho had never really cared to notice. Perhaps he hadn’t really wanted to know.

It was only weeks later that he finally saw the first hint of something more, a moment so subtle that nevertheless left him reeling with discomfort and confusion. It wasn’t even anything raunchy, just the two of them sitting side by side on the couch with a movie playing on the screen, in plain view of anyone who might walk by. Jongho had, naturally, paused for just a moment to see if it might be a movie he would want to join in on.

It took him a couple of seconds to glance from the screen to the two older boys, Yeosang with his legs tucked up beneath him and Wooyoung with his chin digging into Yeosang’s shoulder. Yeosang had his head turned, his nose brushing Wooyoung’s and their lips barely two inches apart, and there was a faint smile on Yeosang’s face that Jongho had never seen before. They didn’t kiss – Wooyoung let out a soft chuckle before their lips met, and then it was Yeosang who shifted slightly to lay his head on Wooyoung’s shoulder.

Yeosang was handsome at all hours of the day, but that was the first time Jongho had seen him so utterly radiant.

He continued onward to the kitchen, but all he could think of right then was every single time Wooyoung had done the same to him, his chin resting against Jongho’s shoulder, the side of his head sometimes pressing against Jongho’s ear. Wooyoung had always been standing behind him in those instances though. Jongho wouldn’t have been able to kiss him even if he’d turned his head, which he never had.

He didn’t really know what he was feeling right then, but he sincerely hoped that it wasn’t jealousy. It was something more like sadness, he thought, intertwined with the bone-deep longing that resurfaced every time he thought about Wooyoung.

Maybe it was resignation, and maybe that was the best thing for them all.

* * *

Funnily enough, finding out that Wooyoung was categorically unavailable once and for all only made Jongho more daring about his feelings than he had ever been.

It wasn’t like he was trying to _seduce_ Wooyoung – he didn’t even think that was something that was remotely possible. It was more about indulging himself, satisfying that perpetual yearning in him that made his chest tighten like he was running out of air after a sustained note. If Wooyoung was allowed to be happy, why couldn’t Jongho be allowed the same?

“What’s your greatest interest?” Wooyoung had asked him once when they were live, and he had answered, ever so casually, “You.”

Wooyoung had laughed, light-hearted instead of disbelieving, and then he had promptly left to visit Yeosang in the hotel room he shared with Seonghwa right after their live ended. Jongho had been invited, but he had declined in favour of moping alone under the covers.

In interviews, too, he gave out as much of the truth as he dared to.

Who would he bring with him to a deserted island? Wooyoung.

Who would he want to stay with during a zombie apocalypse? Wooyoung.

Who would he want to go to a haunted house with? Wooyoung.

No one ever teased him about his answers. In fact, he wasn’t even sure if they realised that he constantly replied with the same person each time. It was a petty sort of victory, since Yeosang never answered with Wooyoung in these sorts of questions. He was a master of the push-and-pull tactic in public, and the fans ate it all up with delight.

“Don’t meet that 17-year-old Wooyoung,” he would say as Wooyoung pretended to fume, or, “I want to avoid Wooyoung because I’m always with him.”

Of course it was easy for Yeosang to say those kinds of things. Wooyoung was already his. Jongho resented Yeosang for that just as much as he loved him, and the small curl of bitterness in his gut scared him. It felt ominous to even _think_ of Wooyoung and Yeosang breaking up – what would that do to the team, still struggling to find their footing in such a competitive industry? What would that do to Wooyoung, who looked at Yeosang as if he were an angel descended from above?

He wanted only happiness for them, Jongho told himself over and over like a mantra, hoping that repetition would make it true.

In a way, it was as nice as it was pathetic for his crush to go wholly undetected for so long. No one batted an eyelid when Jongho wrapped his arms around Wooyoung from behind and laid his face against Wooyoung’s back, not even the boy himself, who was too occupied playing around with San to notice. No one gave it a second thought when he slung a casual arm over Wooyoung’s shoulder, or stared for just a little too long, or manoeuvred his way into the seat beside Wooyoung in lives.

He was just Jongho, their precious, talented youngest.

He felt like a squirrel desperately hoarding nuts for winter, cherishing every smile that Wooyoung sent his way, every brief touch to the back of his neck. Jongho buried each moment away to be revisited over and over – the sound of Wooyoung’s laugh and the way his name sounded from those lips, the warmth of their palms pressed together and Wooyoung’s fingers curled against his.

This was probably what being killed with the most oblivious sort of kindness possible felt like. Jongho didn’t know if it made him feel better, but it certainly made him feel _something_.

* * *

Moving in with Yeosang and Wooyoung was a new kind of torture.

No longer did they hide their doe-eyed looks of adoration at each other or their intimately whispered conversations from him. Jongho was a part of their room now, and they treated him as such, as if he wasn’t an intruder in their only safe space apart from the rest of the team. Many times they dragged him out for meals with them, and even if they spent most of the time talking to him or about the team, he could never shake the cold feeling of third-wheeling from his shoulders.

Yeosang was meticulous about his skincare, Jongho learned, but Wooyoung not so much. Yeosang didn’t like having hair tickling his neck, but Wooyoung preferred his bangs off his forehead. It was odd, to have lived with these boys for more than two years and still constantly be learning new sides to them. Just as they hadn’t the faintest clue about the feelings that had been simmering in him, so too were there depths to his friends that he had yet to uncover, and probably never entirely would.

It all left Jongho feeling rather tired. He would never understand Wooyoung as deeply and easily as Yeosang did – that was a given by now. What was the point of his feelings then, if they were never going to be returned? What was the point of feelings at all?

“Were you the one who confessed to Wooyoung hyung?” he asked at last, one night when he was alone with Yeosang. Even through the walls, they could hear Wooyoung’s pterodactyl screeches coming from San and Yunho’s room.

Yeosang looked only faintly surprised as he glanced up at Jongho, and the barest flicker of a smile twitched the corner of his lips. “No,” he said. “I don’t think I would ever have dared.”

Jongho ducked beneath the top bunk and crawled over to Yeosang’s side, feeling suddenly small despite the slenderness of the other boy’s frame beside his. “Ever? Then what would you have done if he hadn’t confessed?”

Yeosang leaned his head back against the wall, his brows furrowing slightly in thought. “I don’t know,” he said at last. “Just continued being his friend, I suppose. I was happy like that – I’m happier now, of course, but even just having him near me…I think that would’ve been enough for the me who had never known anything better.” His gaze slid over to Jongho, and there was an intense curiosity now beneath his calm veneer.

Jongho closed his eyes to escape Yeosang’s piercing stare, and it took only a second before he felt Yeosang’s fingers stroke gently through his hair. He didn’t ask the obvious – _Is there someone you like, Jongho-ah?_ – and Jongho was grateful for it.

“I’m tired, hyung,” he whispered. “Being near him is tiring.”

Yeosang continued to comb through Jongho’s hair without a word. Once again, he didn’t ask, and once again, Jongho didn’t offer an answer.

He returned to his own bed when Wooyoung finally pranced back into their room, flushed and grinning in that effortlessly attractive way of his, but not before Jongho saw Yeosang’s face light up once more with that same quiet radiance that only Wooyoung’s presence could ever coax into existence.

There was no bitterness left in him now, only exhaustion and sadness. It felt like he had come full circle, but maybe this was what progress felt like.

Once upon a time, he had craved Wooyoung’s presence like a drug, and then he had moved on to hating the sight of Yeosang’s very existence by Wooyoung’s side. Now, his was a love that was waning, crushed beneath the weight of its own futility. Soon, he hoped, it would be gone for good, and he would be able to rebuild his floundering platonic affection for Wooyoung, a brand of love that he knew with certainty was already reciprocated.

“Goodnight, hyung,” he said quietly into the darkness.

“Night,” Wooyoung chirped back immediately, and then the lower timbre of Yeosang’s greeting sounded moments later.

Jongho turned over so that he was facing the wall, listening to the quiet steadiness of Wooyoung and Yeosang’s breaths, the world dark behind his lowered lids.

He was going to be okay, he thought resolutely. Jung Wooyoung might be his first love, but he would not be his last.

Choi Jongho was going to be okay.

**Author's Note:**

> I really wanted to write a piece about unrequited love, as in truly unrequited and not just 'supposedly unrequited but eventually they get together,' and my weak self couldn't bear to do it to woosang lol. Also I'd just watched [The Star interview](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Fn5LLvidWs&t=123s), which kinda got me thinking.


End file.
